Greek Municipality Saves A $Lot With LibreOffice

“The IT Department in the Municipality of Kalamarià has already installed LibreOffice to all of its 125 PC’s and is in the process of installing it to an additional 45 PC’s, located in various other organizations and bodies under the City Council’s supervision. GreekLUG fully supports the transition process and we already offered productive ideas and solutions on the critical issue of supporting users after the adoption of the free office productivity suite. “

Amen! Is it silly and unwise use of taxpayers’ monies to pay thousands of euros for functionality LibreOffice can provide for $0. FLOSS is much more efficient use of money in these days of deficit-fighting. I recommend they also consider switching to Debian GNU/Linux for their client OS to complete the process of escaping monopoly.

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About Robert Pogson

I am a retired teacher in Canada. I taught in the subject areas where I have worked for almost forty years: maths, physics, chemistry and computers. I love hunting, fishing, picking berries and mushrooms, too.

3 Responses to Greek Municipality Saves A $Lot With LibreOffice

My previous government employer was an exclusive Microsoft software buyer. Thus at work I used their Office software on their controlled networked computers. There was even a special deal let by Microsoft for high volume purchasers. A user could purchase a CD and license for only $20 to use on their home computer.

My employer permitted that so any employees who brought work home could work on documents. I took advantage of that a couple times over the years. I also took advantage of StarOffice, then OpenOffice, then fork LibreOffice on my Linux partition. All my home systems (except my ASUS 701 Netbook, it is exclusively Linux) are dual boot. I found that these alternate free office suites were just as capable for office automation as with Microsoft Office.

They were capable of importing Microsoft Office documents including complex spreadsheets. Through use of both made me realize that LibreOffice is more than sufficient to be a Microsoft Office replacement.

George Hostler wrote, “I’ve used it to import Microsoft documents, then edit them in LibreOffice. It works for me.”

I can’t remember the last time I had anything to do with M$’s stuff but LibreOffice works for me. I mostly use it for word-processing and spreadsheets but it has much more capability. I can’t imagine anyone needing more worth spending money. I’ve converted several schools and only a couple of secretaries with huge inventories of M$’s documents were leery about switching. The last place I worked, the teacher had only a few report card forms that needed conversion. It was easier to retype them rather than fixing the conversion…

This is great news, Robert. I’ve used both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, a fork of OpenOffice. LibreOffice is richly featured good alternative. I’ve used it to import Microsoft documents, then edit them in LibreOffice. It works for me.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.